[Nook Color Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DeathKoil:
As many of you have likely already seen, the Nook Color is available for 179.99 today only (factory refurbished) at http://1saleaday.com/

I've been looking into getting a tablet lately, mostly for play - things like games, reading, and netflix. It seems like the Nook is a great "bang for the buck", and the devs have done some amazing work on it. I have a few questions before I take the dive though...

1. Battery Life.

How is the battery life while watching Netflix? While watching a movie on the SD-Card (let's assume 720P encoding). I notice that the Nook is rated at 8-10 hours with WiFi off, does that mean Wifi kills the battery, or just shaves off an hour or two?

2. Speed.

I understand that the Nook wasn't supposed to be a full fledged tablet, but the Devs have gotten some great ROMs for it that make it so. How is the speed? I want to make sure I'd use the tab over my phone when I'm at home, but my phone is actually quite fast (Atrix 4G, rooted, unlocked, running Alien2 with the OC kernel). Videos of the Nook with CM7 making it look very smooth with everything which is a huge plus (MotoBlur sucks, all animations on my phone are clunky... waiting for CM7 which is in alpha right now).

3. Gaming

I use my phone for moderate gaming, but it kinda sucks. I think that this will be my main focus on the Nook. Using emulators on my Atrix is a lesson a patience... The touch screen times out after 30 seconds of a finger being on the screen, so in games where you have to hold buttons a while, the screen becomes non-responsive. Because my phone's screen is small, it also makes playing a lot of emulators difficult as the buttons are on the screen itself. How do emulators run on the Nook? It looks like games from the market run just fine, which is great.

4. Shared Google account

My google account is tied into my phone right now, if I use the same account on the Nook, will I be able to install all of the same apps / games off of the market automatically?

5. Text Messaging

The Nook is Wifi only, so I know that Gtalk will work. What about SMS style messaging? Is there an app (or native in a ROM) ability to send / recieve text messages from the Nook while its on? This would make it so that I don't have to switch between devices at home in order to play games / watch a movie / whatever and talk to my phones.

Lastly.. what do you use your Tablet for? I know that I will play with this thing non-stop for a while, since its a new "toy". But other than running "old school" console games for a while (and Heroes of Might and Magic), I'm not sure what else I'd use the Tablet for considering that I own a very high end PC for gaming / programming, a MacBook Pro which sits on the coffee table in the TV room, an XboX for netflix streaming to the TV, and my much loved Atrix. I know that the tablet will be awesome while I'm playing with it and flashing ROMs, but from the experience of others... is it a passing fad for fun, or do you get a ton of use out of your tablet? If so, what do you use it for?

Any comments / questions are greatly appreciated. I've been looking into this for a few days, but now I'm on a time limit to buy the Nook on sale today, or wait for the next sale of a tablet.

DK